PARIS SHOCKED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 14 July 1925, Page 5

PARIS SHOCKED

INCREDIBLE A FFA HI LIT V .OF .BRITISH ROYALTY

LORD JELL I COE’S TOBOGGAN RUN

LONDON, May 27. Paris, is shocked, shocked to the marrow by some photographs of Wembley. The photographs which display the K'ng and Queen .touring the Empire at Wembley with all and sundry—Tom. I;i.:k. and Harry, not to mention Harry’s snub-nosed children, are, so says “L’llluslralion,” frankly incredible. Almost as incredible is that of -Lord dcllicoe —Jcllicoo, the august head of our incomparable navy !•—that ho should for a moment condescend ■to be seen in public with his silk hat and stick in his band in the front seat of a Canadian Pacific car in the mimic Rockies and glissading down a spiral toboggan in Treasure Island.

These things are simply not done in our great ally’s Republican territory !

“LTllustration” does not only reveal the terrible pictures, but indulges in a detailed and psychological analysis of tilieir awful import. It imagines a vain thing—such as the apparition of President Doumergue indulging in a swoop on the scenic railway at the Decorative. Arts Exhibition, or Marshal Focli being whirled on roundabouts at Ncuilly Fair. It does not take a long memory to recall how the participation of a French Prime Minister in one of our British pastimes caused his downfall from offiee, for no one doubts at all that M. Briand fell from power simply because he played golf at Cannes with Mr Lloyd George. ? he French psychologist Vaudc!. examining our British complex, supposes that the most august monarch in the world and the illustrious victor of the greatest naval battle in history can do such things without the slightest loss of dignity. But he docs contrive to draw a lesson from it. Do not, he asks, British naval officers play football with their men, despite the immense gulf between them, a thing unimaginable in France? Yet, he points out. when the game is over the gulf remains as deep as ever. "Birth and fortune reassert all their prestige.” Here, then, is the paradoxical explanation. England is a country of castes, France a democracy. A caste can do with impunity what a mere ollicial dare not risk doing. “Ami this is why our great personages never ride on roundabouts, nor launch themselves down the slippery nieanderings of a toboggan nor even dare to go to the cirrus.’’ The commentator in “I.’lllustration again would go further in his esoteric reading of tlit* incidents which he declared threw him into a state of stupor. Mav they not. he asks, throw some light on the British mind which is so unfathomable to the French. “Mnvbe,” he says, "tin's toboggan and thus toy railway might enlighten ns on certain mysterious points of British policy.— Auckland Star correspondent.